It’s been a pretty disappointing year so far for me, to be honest. It doesn’t help that due to Uni work I basically didn’t have any free time in April or up to the last week of May, and here that’s peak sowing time. I had some OK broad (fava) beans, my first ever real crop of artichokes, some sprouting broccoli, and my rhubarb plants, despite only being planted last winter from spare cuttings that looked near death, are so huge that I’ve broken the rules and picked some. I’ve had a few raspberries and strawberries, not many, but they are still going, and most of the herbs are doing OK. Oh, and Sweet William flowers, they did pretty well, though they’re mostly done now.
However… that’s it. All the squash, kale, all the other beans, the corn, even the bleedin’ spring onions, all completely eaten by slugs. Even the sage plant was shredded, and I’ve never had anything touch that before. The wasabi I bought I’m attempting to rescue inside, with one pitiful leaf just hanging on. I must have sown about 10 packets of seed which was scoffed the moment it peeped out the ground. The onion sets came back out the same size they went in, the garlic tops are fat and dead but there’s no bulbs and the few straggly chard plants that survived the early slugs are all bolting, despite still being only snack size.
The season’s not done, and now it’s warmer and drier stuff the weather’s not quite so slug friendly so things are doing slightly better, but the sheer quantity of bare ground is depressing, especially as something was planted in all of it.
The sunflowers have all about run their course, so late next week I’m going to rip them all out and see if I can coax a crop of Yolo Wonder bell peppers from those pots (filled with new soil) before “winter.” Should be able to - 80 days to maturity (mid-October) and I was picking peppers from last year’s crop well into December.
The notorious vigor and tenacity of dill plants paid dividends today when I found a Black Swallowtail caterpillar in my (main) dill patch! I am now raising it to be a butterfly, and its name is Jamaica (ten points to anyone who can guess why).
I don’t mind vigorous tenacious dill anyway because I use it a lot in pickle season and as an ornamental all summer, but the butterfly habitat bit was an unexpected bonus.
I am also rethinking the sentence of execution on the front-steps burdock, as it’s now starting to put forth a profusion of actually kinda charming thistle-ish purple blossoms. Hmmm. And now that the near-constant rain has yielded to heat waves, I’m more appreciative of its ability to stay verdant with no watering.
Took up the last of the (first early) potatoes today. Ten, maybe fifteen kilos. I’ll freeze some and leave the rest in a box in the garage. They’ll be fine for a month.
Then, as the squash are overwhelming the aubergines/eggplants, I bit the bullet and transplanted all of the eggplants into the space left by the potatoes. We’re pretty marginal for eggplants outdoors around these parts - they are just coming into flower. Not sure how they’ll cope with being transplanted, but I don’t think I had much choice, given what the squash are doing.
Bumping this thread to see if anyone wants to give an update on how their gardens are doing, or how they* did* for those with limited growing seasons.
My peppers (Cajun belle and Celebrity Sweet) are still going like crazy. I have enough in the freezer now to last until Judgement Day, and my neighbors are starting to turn down offerings :).
The tomatoes (Cherokee Purple and Big Beef) did only so-so in the heat of summer - better than my expectations but worse than the hype from the garden center promised. The Cherokee Purple produced a few fruit through early August before petering out, but it stayed healthy and flowered profusely in spite of the heat and inability to set fruit. With nighttime temps now (usually) low enough I’m hoping for more production in the next couple of months, so I didn’t plant any new fall tomatoes. The Big Beef gave up much earlier and got too scraggly, so I ripped it out in August.
I’m thinking of putting in some cold weather veggies in about a month, but haven’t decided which ones yet, and it’s not something I’ve done very often. Definitely some lettuce and spinach, but I’m also thinking about broccoli, cauliflower, and/or cabbage. If we get a frost or even a freeze in January I’m fairly certain I can cover them adequately overnight to prevent damage.
Advice from anyone who has experience with winter crops would be appreciated.
We have literal hedges of kale and rainbow chard, a few tomatoes, some kohlrabi, and a ton of parsley. The peppers and eggplants did almost nothing, largely because I overplanted. Carrots and beets have done well. Cucumbers and melons didn’t germinate at all, and only 2 squashes of the 5 different kinds I planted.
I also have to learn to accept that I don’t have enough space to do justice to cabbage, broccoli, or cauliflower.
Basil did well but petered out when it cooled off.
Need to go out this weekend and figure out what needs to be harvested before frost!
I have a nice pot of parsley. And a nice crop of basil, which is drying in the attic. The few tomatoes that grew all disappeared before they turned red. I got a couple of cherry tomatoes. Oddly, I also got a few raspberries. The critters took the rest.
I pulled out most of the big tomato plants, but we’re still getting some from the others plus lots of cherry tomatoes. We have about 28 butternut squash, all volunteers. And the eggplant is still producing.
This is the first year ever that I got so many tomatoes that I’m sick of them. We’ve given lots away.
I invested in bird netting a few years ago - mine came in 15’(?) squares for about six bucks each. Otherwise, there would be nothing to harvest after the birds, squirrels, and the occasional possum got done pigging out.
The squirrels are the worst. I always pictured my trees as having dozens of little cartoon squirrel-sized homes in them, with squirrel-sized kitchens, with tiny squirrel-sized skillets, making fried green tomatoes for supper.